LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap. Copyright No. 

Shelf 31 1 2(oQ 

Mk^P3 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






& 




THE 



LIFE AND CHARACTER 




LEONARD WOODS, D.D., LL.D. 



BY 



EDWARDS A. PARK. 




glntrabjer: 
WARREN F. DRAPER 

1880. 



TfX 



•3 



THE 



LIFE AND CHARACTER 



OP 



LEONARD WOODS, D.D., LL.D. 



BY 



EDWARDS A. PARK. 




!g,ttfr0tr.er : 
WARREN F. DRAPER, 

1880. 

L. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by 

WARREN F. DRAPER, 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washingtop 




The substance of the following Memorial was originally prepared 
to be delivered at the funeral of President Woods. It was after- 
wards remodelled for the purpose of reading it to a circle of his 
friends in Boston. A portion of it was subsequently and informally 
read in Bartlet Chapel to members of the Andover Theological 
Seminary, on the day of the completion of the monument over his 
grave. Many of his relatives and friends have requested the Me- 
morial for the press, and it is now published in compliance with 

their desire. 

• (iii) 



MEMORIAL. 



Leonard Woods, whose life and character we are now to 
commemorate, was born at West Newbury, Massachusetts, on 
the twenty-fourth of November, one thousand eight hundred 
and seven. He died in Boston on the twenty-fourth of 
December, one thousand eight hundred and seventy-eight, at 
the age of seventy-one years and one month. His father was 
Dr. Leonard Woods, of whom it need only be said, that 
without his aid, and that of Dr. Eliphalet Pearson, the An- 
dover Theological School would probably have never existed. 
The mother of Mr. Woods was Abby Wheeler, whose virtues 
were portrayed by Prof. Stuart, and by other appreciative 
friends, in a pamphlet which appeared soon after her demise. 
In his infancy the parents removed to Andover, and here 
they trained their child in the principles of a strict though 
kindly Puritanism. Some parts of the following narrative 
will be unintelligible except in view of the fact, that the 
surprising memory, the beautiful tastes, the pliant temper, 
the sweet, obedient, and docile spirit, the filial affection of the 
boy moulded the character of the Professor and President. 
' The child was the father of the man.' His early and pecu- 
liar love for his parents and his ancestors bloomed out into 
a love for an idealized Puritanism which he associated with 
them. It is a noteworthy incident that all the Founders of 
our Theological Seminary, and all its early Professors, were 
attracted to him in his boyhood ; and their words of kind- 
ness were sometimes recalled by him in his later years with 
a reverential gratitude. He might have been fitly called the 
child of the Institution. 



6 

At the age of eight years he entered Phillips Academy, 
and he continued in it eight years. Many still remember 
him as at that time a boy accurate in the use of the English 
language, quick in his acquisition of Latin and Greek, not 
addicted to athletic sports, but absorbed with the classic 
authors. He was noted for dignity rather than playfulness. 
What is said of boys as such may be said of him with an em- 
phasis : " Maxima debetur pueris reverentia." Still he was 
loved not less than admired. His future eminence was pre- 
dicted by Eliphalet Pearson, the President of the Board of 
Trustees. That learned President was accustomed to ad- 
dress the students of the Academy at its public anniver- 
saries ; and his remarks often aroused the enthusiasm of 
young Woods. One of these addresses in particular made a 
life-long impression on the susceptible boy, and stirred him 
to move onward and upward. It was often suggested to his 
mind by its closing words : " Juvenes ! pergite, pergite ad 
astra." Among his contemporaries in the school were such 
men as Dr. Alexander H. Vinton, Dr. William A. Stearns, 
Mr. Nathaniel P. Willis, Mr. Robert Rantoul, Mr. Osgood 
Johnson. There were other names forming a bright constel- 
lation, but none of them shone brighter than the name of 
Leonard Woods. At the closing anniversary of his academic 
life he was the cynosure of all eyes. All the adjectives ap- 
plied to him were superlatives. On that day it might have 
been said of him as was said by Dr. Kirkland of Fisher 
Ames : " He did not need the smart of guilt to make him 
virtuous, nor the regret of folly to make him wise." 2 Had he 
been called from earth on that day, we can easily imagine the 
elegiac strains of many a harp mourning over one flower 
of genius withered away before it had fully opened. — 'The 
beauty of Israel is fallen on its high places.' ' As soon as 
men had begun to turn their telescopes toward the star, it 
faded away.' 

Having entered the Academy in September 1815, and left 
it in August 1823, he was admitted, in the autumn of that 

1 Life and Works of Fisher Ames, Vol. i. p. 17. 



year, to the Freshman Class of Dartmouth College. In 1824, 
however, he transferred his relation from Dartmouth to 
Union College. Here his plastic mind received a deep and 
lasting impress from Dr. Eliphalet Nott, the President of the 
Institution, and from Dr. Alonzo Potter, then Professor of 
Mathematics in the College, and afterward Bishop of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church in Pennsylvania. Among his 
intimate friends at Union was Dr. Horatio Potter, the pres- 
ent Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the Diocese of New 
York. Several of his college classmates have become emi- 
nent. One of them, Professor William Thompson of the 
Hartford Theological Seminary, says of Mr. Woods : " He 
stood the first in his college class. I think that he reached 
the highest mark in every branch of study. His essays and 
poems were a rich treat to our Adelphic Society, of which he 
was a member and an ornament. His feats in the composi- 
tion of Greek Iambics and Hexameters were regarded as 
wonderful." 1 

In the autumn of 1827 he entered the Andover Theological 
Seminary. In different parts of his Seminary course he was 
a classmate of Dr. Wm. G. Schauffler, the noted missionary ; 
Dr. Wm. Adams, and Dr. Geo. B. Cheever of New York ; 
Prof. B. B. Edwards of Andover, Prof. Charles C. Jones of 
Columbia, South Carolina, and also of Columbia, Georgia, and 
Prof. Thompson of Hartford, Connecticut, who was his room- 
mate at Andover, as well as at Schenectady. No member of 
the Theological School was better versed than Mr. Woods in 
the niceties of the Hebrew and Greek languages. He was 
interested not only in the accents and grammatical forms of 
these languages, but also in their genius, their spirit, their 
literature. Not one of his associates had a larger acquaint- 
ance than he with the writings of the French, German, and 
old English authors. 

During the second and third years of his Seminary course 
he was engaged in translating the Lectures on Christian 
Theology of the German Professor, George Christian Knapp. 

1 Spirit of the Pilgrims, v. 531. 



8 

In making this translation, and enriching it with original 
notes, he studied the works of Schljiermacher, Marheinecke, 
Brettschneider, Moras, Neander, Kant, and other noted Ger- 
mans. He also investigated the general character of the 
theology which had prevailed in the Mediaeval and the earlier 
ages. When he began this translation he was less than 
twenty-one years of age ; wdien he finished it he was less than 
twenty-four. His lengthened Preface to the Lectures, and 
his notes upon them were said by more than one Reviewer to 
give " indications of even a deeper philosophical spirit and a 
more generous flow of soul than the original work itself." 
They certainly evinced an uncommon maturity of mind in a 
man so young. More in the style of Archbishop Leighton 
than in that of a seminary student, he insisted on a profound 
religious experience for the acquisition of a symmetrical 
theology. He was fond of repeating the adage of Pascal : 
" As it is necessary to know human things in order to love 
them, so it is necessary to love divine things in order to know 
them." In 1831 his translation was published at Andover, 
in two volumes, both of which contain twelve hundred and 
twenty-seven pages. A seventh edition of his Lectures was 
published in Philadelphia in 1858. The work was repub- 
lished in Great Britain in 1841. It has been extensively 
used as a text-book in Theological Seminaries. Its useful- 
ness might have been extended still further into the future if 
Mr. Woods had continued to care for it ; if, as it was suc- 
cessively republished, he had modified some of his own trans- 
lations, supplemented some of Dr. Knapp's discussions, and 
kept the work abreast of the times. In his fondness for 
books in general he neglected that which was his own off- 
spring. He had such a high ideal of a perfect treatise, that 
he could never get the heart to make this treatise as nearly 
perfect as he might have made it. A high ideal inspirits 
one man and dispirits another. Leonardo da Vinci never 
finished his great work, because there floated before his mind 
the image of a greater. A sense of perfection makes some 
men imperfect. It is an old German proverb : " The best 
is often the enemy of the good." 



9 

Having finished his Seminary course in September 1830, 
he spent the two following years as an Abbot Resident at 
Andover. In these two years his life resembled that of a 
Fellow in an English University. He was a recluse. He 
seldom made or received a social visit. Almost every day 
he devoted ten hours to his books. If he had persevered in 
this scholastic life, and devoted his maturer studies to the 
editing of his father's Lectures, as he had devoted his more 
juvenile studies to the Lectures of Dr. Knapp ; if he had 
added the luxuriance of his learning and imagination to the 
cautious statements in his father's Theological System, he 
would have done the work for which we should have thought 
that Providence designed him. As it was, he rendered im- 
portant aid to his father during these two years ; and still 
more important aid to Professor Stuart in preparing for the 
press his Commentary on the Romans. He also assisted 
Professor Edward Robinson in conducting the Biblical Re- 
pository. His merit as a critical and accurate proof-reader, 
as a classical and biblical scholar, was fully recognized by 
Professor Robinson, and led to the young man's appoint- 
ment, during the second year of his Abbot Residence, to be 
the Assistant Hebrew Instructor in the Seminary. This was 
the palmy day of the Institution. Professor Robinson had 
just become the Professor of Hebrew, and he, in conjunction 
with Professor Stuart, attracted in 1832 a Junior Class of 
seventy-nine men. So large a class was necessarily divided ; 
the two divisions alternated, each of them reciting to Pro- 
fessor Robinson on one day, and to Mr. Woods on the next. 
There were men of mark in the class. Among them were 
Presidents Samuel G. Brown, and Asa D. Smith ; Professors 
Alpheus Crosby, Clement Long, Elias Loomis, Daniel Smith 
Talcott, William S. Tyler ; and several scholars like David 
Fosdick, Jarvis Gregg, who had attained eminence in their 
youth. To stand up on one day before men like these, who 
had met Professor Robinson on the preceding day, required 
no ordinary self-possession. Professor Robinson had resided 
four years among the literati of Europe, and had come home 

2 



10 

laden with the spoils of German learning. In age he was 
the senior of Mr. Woods by thirteen years, and had enjoyed 
valuable experience as an instructor. Mr. Woods was only 
twenty-four years old, was an utter novice in teaching ; and 
yet he stood up so nearly the equal of Professor Robinson, 
that the class were on the whole as well satisfied with one 
as with the other. The Professor was more profound in his 
knowledge of the Hebrew and its cognates, the assistant had 
a richer store of illustrative literature. The Professor drew 
the more exact diagram, the assistant painted the more ex- 
pressive picture. The Professor was the more exact, yet the 
class felt no want of exactness in the assistant. The assistant 
was the more fascinating in his suggestions, yet the class felt 
no want of interest in the Professor. The assistant had the 
disadvantage of inferior authority ; but he had one conspic- 
uous advantage — lie was a preacher. His first sermons were 
delivered in the old Bartlet Chapel. They were not perhaps 
his best, but they were probably his most fascinating sermons. 
He never charmed his auditors more than he charmed the 
pupils of the Seminary and the Academy. He seemed to be 
formed for a preacher to an audience of scholars. He was a 
" University Preacher." 

He did not leave Andover as the place of his permanent 
residence until February 1833, when he was twenty-five 
years and three months old. The day of 'his departure was 
a day of lamentation on Andover hill. He had now spent 
thirteen years as an indefatigable student in or near the An- 
dover schools. Here let us for a few moments close the 
volume of history, and listen to such prophecies of his future 
career as were current at that time. 

; He will publish volume after volume of sermons which 
will add a new grace and dignity to the American pulpit. 
He will send forth treatise after treatise on Biblical or His- 
torical or Dogmatic Theology, will enrich the science with a 
large wealth of learning, and adorn it with an exquisite rhet- 
oric. He will not only move forward clothed with the robes 



11 

of his father's reputation, but will also rise upward, and will 
add the hosts of his own admirers to the congregation which 
had already learned to trust the name which he inherited. 
If his course of thought should for a time deflect from that 
of his father, he will return to it at last ; and during his occa- 
sional excursions into the fields of ancient or mediaeval, 
philosophical or poetical, literature lie will gather riches of 
illustration and argument for variegating the path from 
which he had wandered for a season. He will exert a refin- 
ing and an elevating influence on the Christian denomination 
in the bosom of which are the friends by whom he has been 
nurtured, and whom he holds fast in a grateful love. Theolo- 
gians of various schools will look up to him as a shining 
light while he lives, and a bright star will go down when he 
descends to his grave.' 

The reasons for these prophecies regarding him were the 
following : He was inured to habits of mental diligence, and 
his capacious memory retained the large information which 
he had acquired ; he started in his public life at no small 
distance ahead of his co-equals in age, and there appeared no 
reason to believe that he would lose the vantage-ground 
attained by his early discipline ; he was precocious, but yet 
in a healthy way, and gave no sign that the rapidity of his 
development would be lessened with age ; he had a rare 
purity of spirit, an exceeding sweetness of temper, a winning 
facility and grace of speech. 

There were reasons, however, which lessened the con- 
fidence of some men who uttered the foregoing prophecies. 
His early characteristics did not all point in one direction. 
Some of these characteristics shed a light, and others a mys- 
tery over his later life. Let us examine them before we re- 
open the volume of his biography. 

He had a speculative mind. He took peculiar delight in 
the processes of philosophy. He was allured to them partly 
by the fact that they were intricate. He was charmed by 
the recondite theories of the Schoolmen, partly by the fact 



12 

that they were recondite. He was especially attracted to such 
theories as were lighted up with the scintillations of genius, 
or adorned with marked beauties of style. The Corinthian 
pillars, adorned with the acanthus leaves, gave him joy. He 
preferred Plato to Aristotle, the German metaphysics to the 
Scotch. He had a decided antipathy to John Locke, and was 
no admirer of Thomas Reid. He was one of the earliest 
American scholars who enjoyed the lucubrations of Cousin 
and Coleridge, and hailed the advent of the transcendental 
intuitional philosophy into our land. He was one of the 
earliest advocates of the " Aids to Reflection." President 
Marsh had a high admiration for him. 

His mind was imaginative and poetical. The analogies 
between the sphere of nature and the sphere of spirit pre- 
sented themselves to him at once. He had a quick and keen 
sense of the beautiful, the graceful, the sublime, the grand. 
He was allured more than his compeers toward the aesthetic 
worth of theories. An argument was commended to him by 
the beauty of it. Still his imagination, fertile as it was, did 
not absorb, though it did affect, his reasoning powers. He 
would often adhere to a metaphysical train of thought when 
the beauties of nature were calling him away from it. In a 
morning walk he would watch the splendors of an Andover 
sunrise, while he did not intermit his conversation on the 
difference between the reason and the understanding. He 
would admire the grandeur of some flying cloud, but in a 
moment would resume his speech on the intuitive beliefs as 
superior to the logical processes. When a member of Phillips 
Academy he was often accompanied in his walks by one of his 
fellow-students, who was then a poet, and afterward became a 
noted one ; but young Woods was wearied and annoyed with 
his companion's fancies, which, although beautiful in them- 
selves, were not associated with any principle of science or 
of morals. — What then shall we say ? for he was esteemed 
by some as a philosopher, and by others as a poet. We say 
that he was distinguished by a rare combination of the specu- 



13 

lative with the imaginative tendencies. If he had directed 
his energies to the preparation of a text-book on Psychology, 
he might have fascinated his readers with his clear thought 
expressed in ornate style. He was a philosopher, but was 
too imaginative to be a philosopher distinctively. He was a 
poet, but was too didactic to be a poet distinctively. In his 
youth his poems were too philosophical, and his philosophical 
essays were too poetical. Two or three critics have said of 
the poet Dryden, that his imagination resembled the wings 
of an ostrich : it enabled him to move faster than many others 
when he ran on the ground, but did not enable him to move 
so high as some others when he attempted to soar in the air. 

Another characteristic of Mr. Woods, as a young man, was 
a love of order and ceremony. His temper unfitted him for 
severity in executing a law ; still he was fond of having a law. 
He did not choose to exercise authority, but he did choose 
that authority be exercised. He was in favor of rules sharply 
marked and firmly established in the church as well as in the 
State. The plan of treating a church as if it were a neigh- 
borly club or coterie, authorized to disband itself at the will 
of the majority ; the plan of encouraging ignorant men to 
exhort the educated and refined at a religious conference ; of 
allowing women whether lettered or unlettered to address a 
promiscuous assembly ; of permitting laymen to occupy the 
clergyman's chair, and to instruct the pastor sitting in the 
layman's pew ; of adopting the familiar style in which the 
private members of the church address their pastor as brother, 
— every such plan he regarded as degrading the authority of 
religion. He had a special fondness for such schemes of 
government as foster a respect not only for learning and 
moral worth, but also for age, and for office as such. Since 
there are natural, he believed that there should be official 
distinctions among men. He loved to picture the church as 
John Milton pictures the " empyreal host of angels," — " of 
hierarchies, of orders, of degrees," 1 " thrones, dominations, 

1 Paradise Lost, Bk. v. 1. 592. 



14 

princedoms, virtues, powers." 1 His early tendencies were 
not toward a democracy in the church or in the state ; not 
toward republicanism ; especially not toward universal suf- 
frage ; but toward an aristocracy, the government twv 
apicTjoiv ; and even toward a monarchy. 

He had an esteem for ecclesiastical vestments, marking the 
gradations of ecclesiastical officers, and guarding their dig- 
nity. He believed that the robes of office, appealing to the 
imagination of men, teach a salutary lesson ; that liturgical 
forms secure the decorum and the majesty of worship, and 
are important as means of popular instruction, not less than 
of orderly devotion. He venerated the conservatism of dress 
as well as of manners which marks the old universities and 
the old churches of Europe. 

Germane to the preceding qualities was one by which Mr. 
Woods was marked in a special degree. This was his rever- 
ence for antiquity. The workings of his mind are doubly 
mysterious to those who do not understand his enthusiasm 
for what he called " the solemn and shadowy regions of the 
past." He learned in Phillips Academy to love the ancient 
authors ; his comprehensive memory retained their sayings, 
and his amiable temper led him to linger on their good 
words and hide their evil. Long before the Gothic architec- 
ture was adopted for our Puritan sanctuaries he was influ- 
ential in recommending it. " I believe," said an objector 
" that a meeting-house should be constructed according to the 
laws of acoustics." " I believe," was the young man's an- 
swer, " that a church should be erected according to the laws 
of optics." This was the style of the " believing ages." The 
spirit of worship was stirred within him when, in his Andover 
study, he reflected on the old cathedral, eloquently building 
into itself the expressive cross, and lifting up its spires to 

1 Paradise Lost, Bk. v. 1. 600, 601. In this aspect, he took an early and a 
peculiar delight in repeating- such passages in the Roman Catholic Liturgy 
as " cum Angelis ct Archangelis, cum Thronis et Domination ibus, cnmque 
omni militia coelestis exercitus, hymnum gloriae tuae canimus, sine fine 
dicentcs," etc. 



15 

heaven as accompaniments of the prayers which were rising 
from it morning and evening, day and night, in the centuries 
gone by. In his early youth his veneration was drawn forth 
toward the more ancient temples of Egypt and Greece, and 
in an ominous degree there glimmered before his admiring 
eye the dome of St. Peter's, that Pantheon hanging in the air. 
At the time of his entering on public life, the churches 
of New England were in a debate regarding certain new 
measures of Christian activity. Almost by an instinct was 
his preference decided for the old against the new. Our 
churches were in controversy in regard to new theories of 
Christian doctrine. As if he were a venerable controver- 
sialist he stood up firm in his opposition to the novel theories. 
He held the substance of his father's creed not only because 
he deemed it accurate, but also because he deemed it ancient. 
In his theological investigations he adopted the old legal 
maxims : " Stare super vias antiquas " ; " Stare decisis et 
non quieta move re." His love for the established faith as 
contrasted with the innovating formularies was regarded as 
an omen of his future eminence in the church. His imag- 
ination, men thought, would suggest new persuasives for the 
adoption of the old creeds. His philosophical spirit and 
aesthetic nature would present those creeds in an authorita- 
tive and attractive form. His love of the antique would lead 
him into a broad field of historical investigation, and it was 
not easy to decide whether he would be the more useful as 
an historian or as a philologist 

Characterized as Mr. Woods was by a love of antiquity, it 
was to be expected that he would feel a profound veneration 
for the Bible. He revered it as instinct with the noblest and 
the tenderest sentiments, as fostering the true principles of 
jurisprudence, as the summit of the highest philosophy. 
While a member of our Theological Seminary he was bold in 
his declaration, that the proof in favor of the inspired word is 
more logical than the proof in favor of any scientific theories 
which seemed to be in conflict with that word. He believed 



16 

that the Bible " is not merely co-ordinate with nature, but 
superior to it ; " its assertions are not to be modified by the 
discoveries of science, but are the standard by which the dis- 
coveries of science are to be tested. He did not believe that 
there is any, but he did believe that if there should be any, 
opposition between any theory which reason asserts and any 
theory which the Bible asserts, we must reject the former as 
the utterance of man, and accept the latter as the utterance 
of God. He adhered to the dictum that we are not to inquire 
what the Scriptures ought to teach, and then interpret them 
according to the result of our inquiries; but we are first to 
ascertain what the Scriptures do teach, and then must subor- 
dinate our antecedent opinions to that teaching. Hence he 
did not first examine the records of geology in order to 
decide whether the world was created in six literal days, 
within the last six, eight, or ten thousand years, but he first 
examined the book of Genesis and accepted the obvious, 
literal meaning of its words. " Where, then, is the science 
of geology," he was asked. " Where is the Bible," he re- 
plied. His opinion was that if the Scriptures, when inter- 
preted independently of all science, teach the doctrine of 
Baptismal Regeneration, we must believe the doctrine even 
if science contradicts it ; and if the Bible, when examined 
irrespectively of all judgments prompted by the senses, 
asserts that the sacramental bread is the body and the sacra- 
mental wine is the blood of Christ, we must believe in the 
doctrine of Transubstantiation, let the eye and the touch and 
the taste oppose it as they will. Every doctrine of what 
men term common sense must yield to the inspired word, 
and this word must not yield to any doctrine of common 
sense or uncommon. His eye never glistened, his face never 
glowed with so much enthusiasm, as when he exalted the 
Divine Word to be the judge by which every system of 
merely human discovery was to be acquitted or condemned. 
One of the sentences which he wrote before he left his 
father's roof is an accurate expression of his early disrespect 
for all systems of philosophy, for all pretended intuitions or 



IT 

deductions which conflict in any degree with what he re- 
garded as the inspired regulator of all science. After 
denouncing the Rationalism of Germany, he says : "In the 
days of Spener, Theology was the Queen of Sciences, so ac- 
knowledged by the mouth of Bacon, Leibnitz, Haller, and 
others, — their chosen oracles. She wore the insignia of 
divinity ; • and k filled her odorous lamp ' at the very original 
fountain of light. But in an evil hour, she took this flatter- 
ing Rationalism to her bosom. Now stripped of every mark 
of divinity, cut off from her native source of light, and thrust 
out into the dark, this foolish virgin is compelled to say to 
her sister Sciences, ' Give me of your oil ; for my lamp has 
gone out.' " 1 

The preceding traits of Mr. Woods were intertwined with 
another which it is not easy to portray. He had an intense 
individuality of character. He was himself ; he was like no- 
body else. He united in his own person qualities which seem 
to be mutually repellent. The associations of the word for- 
bid us to call him eccentric, yet he was original in the struc- 
ture of his mind and heart. His early companions will say 
that he was eminently social, yet he lived often aloof from 
even the friends whom he loved. They will commonly say 
that he was transparent ; but by no means was it true that, 
as Goethe says of Shakspeare's characters, he was like a 
clock with a crystal dial-plate which lets men see all the 
machinery within. Communicative, indeed, he was ; but he 
often seemed to be moving around the centre of a circle the 
circumference of which was not stepped over by his most in- 
timate companions. Walking his room in a reverie he 
seemed to be possessed by incommunicable ideas. He seemed 
to have been made not after the model of the nineteenth cen- 
tury ; not after the American standard ; but for living in an 
age gone by, with the Benedictines on Monte Casino, walking 
over the floors of Florentine mosaic, enjoying the precious 
marbles around the altar, regaling his vision on the pan- 

1 Translation of Dr. Knapp's Theology, Vol. i. Preface, p. xv. 
8 



18 

orama of the Italian plains and mountains, revelling in the 
library of antique manuscripts, feasting on the reminiscences 
of Tasso and Thomas Aquinas. Still, monastic as were his 
tastes, his love for his friends was wonderful, passing the 
love of women. All this originality of character attracted 
uncommon attention to him as a conversationalist, for men 
love to commune with one who is not the exact counterpart 
of every other. At the same time ifc threw an air of mystery 
around him. This mystery gained for him one kind of in- 
fluence, but took away from him another. A mysterious man 
is apt to be a suspected man. Mr. Woods would have been 
in his early days an object of suspicion, had he not been 
saved from it by his kindly spirit breathed out in his urbane 
manners. 

As we have noticed that one tendency of his mind was 
held in check by another, so we may notice that all of his 
characteristics were modified by two which rarely exist in 
union. The first of these two was a love of personal inde- 
pendence. As he was unique, so he loved to make unique 
expressions. His father would modify the statements which 
the son would leave unqualified. The father chose to pro- 
pitiate the common mind by guarded words ; the son, amiable 
as he was, often discarded euphemisms, and uttered some 
unpopular thought in some needlessly unpopular way. 

The second of the antagonistic traits in Mr. Woods was 
his sympathy with his companions. Independent, self-poised, 
he yet loved to harmonize with his personal or literary 
friends. Indeed, his literary became his personal friends. 
The men with whom he communed in books were as dear to 
him as the men with whom he communed face to face. 

It was interesting to notice the degree in which his char- 
acter was moulded by his father. His filial love was emi- 
nently strong, and was exhibited in the very heart of his 
metaphysical Essays. It led him into a peculiar fondness 
for the clergymen, so unlike himself, who were allied with 
his father in theological controversy, into a veneration for 



19 

the Pilgrim and Puritan theologians with whom the heart of 
his father was identified. It was natural to predict that he 
could never be persuaded to leave the religious denomination 
hallowed by the memory of the early pastors of New Eng- 
land. He revered them as rugged men who upheld the 
authority of the pulpit and enforced the command : " Obey 
them who have the rule over you " ; as stalwart divines, each 
of whom was a bishop in his own diocese, and exerted a con- 
trolling influence not only over ecclesiastical but also over 
secular affairs ; as Episcopal Congregational ists who kept 
the laymen in their proper place, were distinguished from 
laymen by a clerical attire, adapted their sermons not to 
small children, but to strong men. 

His delight in the stern Calvinists of our Puritan colonies 
was equalled by his delight in Dr. Newman and Dr. Pusey, 
those rioted opponents of Calvinism, and in the divines and 
philosophers of the early and the Middle Ages. It may be 
said of him, as has been said of Pusey : " The patristic lan- 
guage was one with which he felt instinctively at home ; he 
had been an early disciple of the Fathers ; he dwelt with a 
congenial love upon their mysterious intuitions, their dark 
sayings, their awful windings of thought, their large field of 
spiritual analogies, their lights, their shadows, their oracular 
hints, their sacred fancy, their force and their feeling. He 
had a sympathy with all this." 1 

Two or three of the traits already ascribed to Mr. Woods 
may be presented in a somewhat different phase. As a 
youthful student he was animated by a love of ideas more 
than by any personal aims, or by a literary or scientific 
enthusiasm. The motives which have influence on other 
students had of course a degree of influence on him. Still, 
in the proportion of these influences upon him he was pecu- 
liar. He was not exempt from ambition, but some of his 
comrades had more of it, if we define ambition as a desire to 

1 Mozley's Essays, Historical and Theological (Rivington's ed.), Vol. ii. p. 
162. 



20 

surpass other men. The path to fame lay open before him, 
but he manifested no special eagerness to walk in it. " The 
trophies of Miltiades did not disturb his sleep." Doubtless 
he felt the touch of emulation as distinct from ambition, and 
as consisting in a desire to reach, or rise above, a particular 
standard because other men are aiming to reach it or have 
risen above it already. Many of his comrades, however, 
were in this view more emulous of excellence than he. They 
likewise had more of what is called aspiration, as distin- 
guished from emulation, and as consisting in a desire to rise 
not higher than others, not as high as others, not with any 
reference to others, but to rise high in character or achieve- 
ment for the mere sake of the character or achievement. 1 
He was not particularly stirred by the thought of taking 
John Milton's " no middle flight." In his youth he did not 
resolutely devote himself to any far-reaching plan for his 
future life. Without any undue love of reputation he might 
have projected some monumental work of which he could say 
" This one thing i" do " — (ev Se). Macaulay cannot be 
accused of any selfish ambition because he concentrated his 
otherwise divergent energies into a single focus. " I have 
aimed high," he writes ; " I have tried to do something that 
may be remembered ; I have had the year two thousand, and 
even the year three thousand, often in my mind ; I have 
sacrificed nothing to temporary fashions of thought and 
style." The aims of Mr. Woods were less personal than 
those of Macaulay. He was actuated by a love of truth, but 
in this he did not rise above some of his companions in 
study ; nor had he more of an impulse than they to delve 
into the mysteries of science or arrange its phenomena in the 
most logical method. It was not a curiosity to find out the 
exact system of truth, not a desire to dig for it as for hidden 
treasures ; but it was a hospitality for the beautiful and noble 
ideas which were presented to him by the muses and the 

1 The exact truth is suggested rather than expressed in the aphorism : "A 
noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than 
himse'if, and a mean man by one that is lower than himself. The one produces 
aspiration, the other ambition." 



21 

sages ; it was a quick and sympathetic recipiency for the 
great and good thoughts of the literary patriarchs ; it was an 
interest in perfecting the sentiments which pleased his taste 
and imagination, and were adorned with graceful language, 
— this it was which made him a young scholar apart by 
himself. He was wafted along by his diversified sensibilities 
into variable courses of reflection, and was not anxious to 
steer his bark into any one channel. These courses of re- 
flection ' entertained his mind with variety and delight,' and 
he sailed to and fro enraptured with the ever-changing pros- 
pects. He did not fix his eye upon any one goal. He 
thought more of the current along which he might drift, and 
less of the anchor which might prevent his movement. 

It would be unjust to say that in his early life he had a 
marked love of his own ease ; it is simply just to say that he 
rested in his love of grand and venerable ideas. Thus lie 
gave occasion for hostile critics to repeat the sayings : '-Bene 
cogitare non multo melius est quam bene somniare " ; '" Con- 
templatio, speciosa inertia." There is a kind of mental 
activity akin to intellectual repose. A freedom from undue 
emulation is a virtue ; the greater virtue, if it be united with 
a spirit of literary enterprise. There is a kind of unrecog- 
nized indolence indulged by a mind which is always busy ; 
a mind which will never tolerate an indolence deliberate or 
recognized ; a mind which is so busy in the more pleasant 
and the less difficult processes of thought that it finds no 
time for the less pleasant and the more difficult. Seneca 
says that " not only is he an idle man that does nothing, but 
he also who might be better employed." The early friends 
of Mr. Woods did not believe that his tendency to indulge in 
noble reveries like those of the schoolmen would strengthen 
with his strength ; but they did presume that his habits of 
diligence, like those of the schoolmen, would grow with his 
growth, and would outgrow his love for the beauties of 
mediaeval literature. Years are more apt to mature the 
judgment than to enliven the imagination or quicken the 
taste. 



22 

In his youth Mr. Woods was characterized by such a variety 
and strength of emotion as was too great for the power of 
his will. We need not say that his will was too weak ; it is 
more charitable to say that his feelings were too strong and 
too diversified. His will was powerful enough for the com- 
mon range of sentiments, but not for so wide a range as his. 

Hence, as a young man he was not practical. He calmly 
meditated on a thing to be done, but was not quick to resolve 
on doing it. He was delighted with the contemplation of a 
deed, would intend to perform it, and would be satisfied with 
the intention. The Chevalier Bunsen wrote when twenty- 
seven years old, " I hold fast, as well as I can, by the princi- 
ple not to let fall anything once begun." 1 Mr. Woods at the 
age of twenty-seven did not hold such a principle, still less 
did he hold it fast. By no means was he destitute of either 
a taste or a talent for business. Even as a young man he 
was often consulted by his father on grave questions of ex- 
pediency. He often manifested a large degree of diplomatic 
skill. If as a boy he had been more familiar with other 
boys, and less familiar with scholastic divines, then as a can- 
didate for the ministry he might perhaps have been as fond 
of exerting himself in public as of serenely meditating in 
private. Martin Luther advised men to become teachers of 
the common school before they became teachers in the pulpit; 
for in superintending the child's mind they would learn the 
guiding principles of human nature. It has been often pre- 
scribed that every one before entering a learned profession 
should be trained in the labors of a farm, or in some form of 
handicraft. Mr. Woods had received no homely discipline 
like this. He lived in an atmosphere of theories ; his imag- 
ination entwined itself around them, as a vine around an oak ; 
but when lie was summoned to act out those theories, he 
chose to entertain them still. He indulged himself in them, 
instead of working for them, or inquiring whether they could 
be carried out or not. He was Oriental rather than Occiden- 
tal in his habits of thought ; and seemed to be sailing over 

1 Memoirs, Vol. i. p. 154. 



23 

the Bcsphorus in a caique, with nothing to do but to charm 
himself with a scheme floating before his imagination. 

As he was not distinctively practical, so when a young 
man he was not self-consistent in the details of his life. It 
is said of one person : You know just where to find him ; his 
nature is so impoverished, he is so blear-eyed that he cannot 
see the way out of the beat-m path ; he is self-consistent 
because his nature is so poor. Mr. Woods was not this 
person. It is said of another man : You know just where 
to find him ; for although he has intense and diversified 
emotions, yet he has a will strong enough to control them ; 
he is a self-consistent man because his powers exactly balance 
his sensibilities. Mr. Woods was not this man ; his charac- 
ter was rich, but net well rounded and complete. He was 
not the captain of a small company, reducing his few soldiers 
to subjection, neither was he the general of a large army, 
keeping all his regiments and batallions in due order. Was 
he serene ? He was fond of those devotional writers (as Dal- 
gairn, for example) who were the most intense. He had a 
real love for Rousseau, because Rousseau expressed such a 
passion for the character of Christ. But was the young man 
intense ? He was noted for his calmness. He seemed to be 
a quietist. Still he illustrated the remark of Thoreau : 
" When I see a man with serene countenance, it looks like 
a great leisure that he enjoys ; but in reality he sails on no 
summer's sea. This steady sailing comes of a heavy hand 
on the tiller." Was Mr. Woods a sympathetic man ? Yes ; 
by a kind of instinct he was moved to defend the weaker of 
two opponents, and if the question between the two were 
exactly balanced, he was only to learn which was the stronger 
ere his sympathies clustered around the feebler. Was he 
apathetic ? More than forty years ago, when the party of 
abolitionists began their warfare against slavery, it was ex- 
pected that a youth so compassionate as he would sympathize 
with them ; but he became their firm opponent ; he dreaded 
the confusion which might come from disturbing the ancient 
usages of society. Was he catholic in his feelings ? Among 



24 

liis various emotions he appeared to have some kind of a 
leaning toward something good in almost every man, and 
almost every party ; and if others injured him he commonly 
uttered kind words in regard to them. Was he uncharitable ? 
When he suspected men of innovating upon the established 
faith of his sect, or the immemorial usages of his party, he 
gave a new illustration of the maxim, that a contest with 
one's kindred is more severe than a contest with strangers. 
" Charity never faileth " ; but his charity failed when he con- 
tended with innovators. And was he not himself an inno- 
vator ? He favored such novelties only as he thought were a 
reproduction of antiquities. He pleaded for such innovations 
only as he thought would rehabilitate the ancient usages. 
Was he a cautious man ? Yes. Was he incautious ? Yes, 
In his youth he was fond of narrating incidents in which it 
appeared doubtful, whether he was the more adventurous in 
plunging into awkward dilemmas, or the more dexterous in 
extricating himself from them. Had he a sense of consist- 
ency ? Did he care to be one with himself ? for he certainly 
was by himself. He did not appear to be one of those men 
whose method of speculating is influenced by their practice ; 
nor one of those men whose practice is influenced by their 
method of speculating. In fact, he sometimes appeared to 
be made up of two personalities, one of them believing in a 
theory, the other acting against it. One lengthened series 
of his developments was consistent with one of these per- 
sonalities ; another lengthened series was consistent with 
another of them. Still he seemed to have some occult mode 
of harmonizing to his own mind those phases of thought and 
act which seldom meet in one and the same man. He did 
not move in a straight line toward one central orb, nor in a 
straight line away from it, but he revolved around it. He 
meant to be as self-consistent as the moon in its relation to 
the earth ; and if his movements were oscillating in brief 
portions of his course, he meant to make them, like the 
movements of the moon, regular on the whole. 



25 

We have now considered the predictions which were made 
by the early friends of Mr. Woods in regard to his future 
career. 1 These predictions might, perhaps, have been more 
exactly fulfilled if one event had occurred which his friends 
had anticipated. The whole current of his thoughts and 
studies might have been directed by that event, as the course 
of a ship is determined by a slight movement of the rudder. 
Not long after Professor Edward Robinson resigned his Pro- 
fessorship at Andover, Mr. Woods was highly recommended 
as a candidate for the vacant office. If he had occupied that 
office lie would have been surrounded by troops of friends, 
his own and his father's ; would have been associated with 
men known to him from his boyhood, and endeared to him 
by their paternal interest in his career ; would have continued 
to breathe the intellectual and spiritual atmosphere which 
had invigorated as well as regaled him in his early days ; 
would have been moved by that mysterious air breathing 
forth from the genius loci; would have felt the united im- 
pulse of habit, of interest, and of duty to pursue a course of 
life like that which had been marked out for him. Every 
one is in some degree the child of circumstances. We need 
not except that man who bears up against the sway of all cir- 
cumstances, and derives a peculiar force of character from the 
very circumstance that they had a power which he resisted. 

It has been said that in certain contingencies the prophe- 
cies in regard to Mr. Woods might have been fulfilled ; let us 
now re-open the volume of his biography, and learn how far 
they were fulfilled. 

In the early part of 1833, having already declined various 
informal calls to important offices, he accepted an invitation 
to supply the pulpit of the Laight Street Presbyterian Church 
in New York, during the absence of Rev. Samuel H. Cox, 
DD., who was to spend several months in Europe. The 
subdued rhetoric of Mr. Woods was so unlike the shining 
style of Dr. Cox, the clerical tastes and the theological ten- 

1 See pages 10, 11. 
4 



26 

dencies of the one appeared to be so incompatible with those 
of the other, that men were surprised at his receiving the 
invitation, more surprised at his accepting it, and most of all 
surprised that he should have succeeded in a service where 
most men would have failed. His sermons resulted in ob- 
vious and permanent good. He produced an impression on 
some minds that he was peculiarly qualified for a pastorate. 
He might have become a most impressive preacher to an 
aristocratic parish in a city, or to a congregation of literary 
men in a university. He would have earned a great advan- 
tage to himself as a practical man if he had inured himself 
to pastoral labor among the unlettered and the poor. 

After he had closed his term of service at Laight Street, 
he remained in New York until the year 1835. He was 
ordained there as an evangelist by the Third Presbytery. 
His father preached the ordination sermon. The sermon 
confirmed the general expectation that the young man set 
apart for the ministry would be a discriminating preacher of 
the Calvinistic doctrines. It recommended that these doc- 
trines, decrees and election among the rest, be preached in 
the progress of a religious revival. It was such a sermon as 
Jonathan Edwards might have delivered at the ordination 
of his pupil, Samuel Hopkins ; or such as Joseph Bellamy 
might have delivered at the ordination of his pupil and son- 
in-law, Dr. Levi Hart. The style of preaching here advocated 
by the father was admired by the son, as the torso of the 
Vatican was admired by Michael Angelo. When the son, 
however, came to supply the missing accompaniments of the 
torso, he chiselled a somewhat different statue from that 
which was projected by the father. The son had his own 
views of the style appropriate to the pulpit. Although 
skilled in philosophy, he eschewed it in a sermon. He had 
a peculiar love for debate in private converse, but a peculiar 
aversion to controversy in the pulpit. Although fond of 
doctrinal, he was not particularly fond of argumentative 
sermons. If he had been a vain man, he might have aston- 
ished his hearers by a display of his Biblical philology. Like 



■ 27 

a modest man, he appealed to the intuitive belief of his 
hearers. He relied on the faith which they had received 
from tradition. He chose to present a doctrine without dis- 
closing the processes of arriving at it ; to hold it before his 
auditors ; to turn it around ; to let them look at it on all 
sides. It was a statue speaking for itself. He seemed to be 
communing with his theme, rather than grappling with the 
will of his hearers ; to be more interested in principles than 
in his hearers. He chose not personally to enforce a doc- 
trine, but to present it so that it would enforce itself ; not 
personally to point out the moral of a truth, but to exhibit 
the truth so that it would suggest its own moral. He had a 
seemingly innate abhorrence of utilitarianism ; and in various 
forms reiterated the remark, " It is not the office of the 
student of revelation to inquire What will be useful; but 
simply What is true" 1 According to these principles, his 
words did not fall like hailstones and coals of fire from the 
pulpit ; the storm did not come down, nor the floods descend, 
nor the winds blow and beat upon his auditors ; but his 
' speech distilled as the dew, as the small rain upon the 
tender herb,' and the virtue of his hearers ' grew as the lily, 
and cast forth its roots like Lebanon.' He recoiled so much 
from the style of preaching adopted by many revivalists of 
his early days, that he condemned not exactly all exhorta- 
tion, but all vehement exhortation, in sermons. He believed 
that men are allured to virtue not by entreaties, but by the 
inherent excellence of virtue itself. He believed that men 
are repelled from the house of God by what some call " in- 
dividuality," but what he called personality, in the pulpit ; 
by words which the exhorters regard as " faithful," but 
which he regarded as uncivil. Pie believed that violent ex- 
postulation irritates the nerves and disgusts the taste oftener 
than it reforms the will of hearers. He believed the great 
persuasive to be the atonement made on Calvary. He was 
at home in the pulpit when he described " the portals of 
heaven opening, the Son of God appearing, not in terror, but 

1 Literary and Theological Review, Vol. i. p. 15. 



28 

in love ; not to condemn, but to save, — heralded by a shout 
of peace and good-will ; approaching with the olive-branch 
of reconciliation, in meek and humble guise, with a counte- 
nance of benignity and words of peace, and at last laying 
down his life for the sins of the world," thus recognizing in 
men a sentiment of generosity, " a susceptibility of being 
moved by kindness " ; appealing to these principles, conquer- 
ing men " not by any direct and violent hostility " to them, 
but by love and self-denial and grace. 1 

Calm and quiet as he was thought to be, yet while medi- 
tating on such themes before he entered the pulpit to preach 
upon them, he sometimes trembled with excitement, but as 
soon as he began to speak it seemed at if he had never trembled. 
He clothed his thoughts with the drapery of his rich but 
chastened imagination ; his eye beamed and his whole coun- 
tenance glowed with sentiment ; his voice was agreeable, 
pliant, expressive of varied feeling ; his utterance was de- 
liberate, and disclosed his power to play upon the sensibilities 
of his auditors, as a musician sweeps the strings of a harp. 
His eloquence in the pulpit illustrates the principle, that 
unless an orator can rule his own spirit he cannot take the 
hearts of his audience ; still the influence of his self-control 
depends upon his having such acute sensibilities as require 
a vigorous effort to govern them. Clear thought, deeply felt, 
and having possession of the speaker who has possession of 
himself, is eloquence. 

In his homiletical, as well as other productions, Mr. Woods 
failed to illustrate the maxim that u every man is a debtor to 
his profession." He failed to finish what he had begun. He 
left his choice words in the air. He did not prepare for the 
press a single one of his more elaborate sermons. Some 
notes are found of their more prominent thoughts, of their 
most highly finished sentences, and these are the mementoes 
of the man. There are some artists who have gained as high 
a fame from the " studies " which they have laboriously 
executed as from any of their completed pictures ; but the 

1 See, among other passages, Literary and Theological Review, Vol. ii. p. 359. 



29 

" sketches " as written by Mr. Woods give no worthy impres- 
sion of the sermons as delivered by him. There was such a 
magic in his delivery as arose from the fact that some of his 
thoughts when spoken were as new to him as to his hearers. 
His discourses, as uttered extempore in part and memoriter 
in part, often surpassed any productions which he elaborated 
for the press. He needed the stimulus of an audience for 
the highest exercise of his powers. When he had passed 
from under the spell of attentive listeners, he felt unable to 
reproduce the sermon in a form comparable with that which 
sprung upon him in the pulpit, or with the lofty ideal which 
swayed before his mind. His high idea of a sermon was one 
reason why in his later years he recoiled from preaching. 
His excitement in preparing for the pulpit was followed by 
disappointment in not reaching the standard ever shining be- 
fore him. The artist Opie was so dissatisfied with his pictures 
that often, in an agony of despondence, he exclaimed : " I 
never, never shall be a painter as long as I live." Mr. Woods 
had this spirit of an artist. His literary orations were fol- 
lowed by plaudits which heightened his ideal of a sermon, 
and made him despair of writing one. In 1840 he pro- 
nounced at Harvard College, and in 1842 he repeated at 
Dartmouth, a Phi-Beta-Kappa oration which was extolled by 
the poet Richard H. Dana as an honor to American litera- 
ture. Even those who condemned its sentiments admitted 
its style to be unsurpassed, if not unequalled. In 1852, at 
the request of the city government and citizens of Portland, 
he delivered a Eulogy on Daniel Webster. In 1859, at 
the request of the Maine Historical Society, he pronounced 
in the presence of that Society and of the State Legislature, 
a Eulogy on Parker Cleveland, LL.D., the celebrated Profes- 
sor of Chemistry in Bowdoin College. In 1862 lie delivered 
an Address at the opening of the New Hall of the Medical 
School. These four productions were in themselves sufficient 
to mark their author as a man of broad culture, ripe learning, 
and rhetorical skill. In several cities of New England he 
delivered a Lecture on the " Liberties of the Ancient Re pub- 



30 

lies." The secular press was exultant in praise of the lec- 
turer, — of his " majestic grasp of thought," his " melody of 
language," the " intoxicating charm of his oratory." Still 
his most masterly efforts out of the pulpit were inferior to 
some of his efforts in the pulpit. Every new discourse gave 
him new views of what is possible in eloquence, and dis- 
couraged him from attempting what he dared not believe that 
he could attain. If he had cherished as much faith in him- 
self as he cherished in the mediaeval divines, his published 
sermons would be now the delight of his friends. A modest 
man will often shrink from beginning what a bold man will 
successfully accomplish. Some virtues are an obstacle to 
immediate prosperity. Andrew Jackson was wont to say, 
" there is policy in rashness." 

In the career of Mr. Woods as an orator there is one note- 
worthy fact, and a similar fact is obvious in some other, but 
not in all, departments of his activity ; he did not ascend by 
slow and gradual steps to his high position, but he reached it 
at a bound. His earlier discourses were not much, if at all, 
inferior to his later. During the forty-eight years of his" 
ministry he did not appear to be rising higher and higher : 
it can be said of him that at the first he was great, but not 
that he " ever great and greater grew." He started on one 
of the clerical table-lands, and he remained there. It is a 
common mark of a precocious mind to be superior, but not 
progressive. 

Mr. Woods was more remarkable perhaps for his private 
conversation than for his public addresses. His colloquial 
powers, although recognized before, were never so fully devel- 
oped as during his residence in New York. The different 
personalities embodied within him imparted a singular in- 
terest to his table-talk. He had read not only those books 
which appertained to his clerical office, but also those which 
qualified him for promiscuous intercourse. His memory was 
stored with illustrative remarks from the poems of Goethe, 
Schiller, the French as well as English dramatists, the Euro- 



31 

pean as well as the American historians. He was a connois- 
seur as well as an amateur of the fine arts. He was free 
from pedantry and ostentation ; his diction was neat, select, 
elegant, though familiar ; like Addison he preferred cheer- 
fulness to mirth ; he had a delicate but not a boisterous 
wit ; he was amusing while instructive ; adroit but not caus- 
tic in repartee. He had the one accomplishment which con- 
versationalists so often want, — the accomplishment which 
distinguishes the colloquy from the monologue. — he was a 
good listener as well as talker. He allowed himself to utter 
no words of flattery, yet his deferential ways were a perpet- 
ual compliment to the circle which gathered around him. 
His address was gentle and kindly ; he never appeared to be 
on the strain, and never kept his companions on the strain, 
to say anything eminently wise or useful or proper. He put 
himself and others at their ease ; and this is the secret of a 
conversationalist. Mr. Fox, requesting Dr. Lawrence to put 
on paper what he wished to tell, said : " I love to read your 
writings, I hate to hear you talk." Many friends of Mr. 
Woods who loved to read what he had indited with his pen, 
loved still more to hear what he was so felicitous in uttering 
with his lips. No small part of the influence he exerted 
through his entire life flowed from his conversation. His 
choice words cannot now be recalled, but they left a perma- 
nent impression on the heart. He took men one by one and 
influenced them singly as he could not have influenced them 
in a mass. He broke many faggots each by itself, when he 
could not have broken them if they had been all bound to- 
gether. More than one eminent man has said : " If I have 
ever accomplished anything in life, I am indebted for it to 
the conversation of Mr. Woods." 

It has been said of Sir James Mackintosh that his varied 
learning ought to have been preserved in books, but was al- 
lowed to evaporate in parlor-talk. Lord John Russell observes : 
" Conversation was his favorite employment, and his chief 
seduction." The poet Rogers says : "He sacrificed himself 
to conversation ; he read for it, thought for it, and gave up 



32 

future fame for it." The faculty of conversation often steals 
away the enterprise of authorship. Still, many a man has 
controlled public opinion by his familiar colloquies. Uttering 
the right word at the right moment, lie has noiselessly im- 
pressed his own mind upon the few listeners who in their 
turn have moulded the minds of the community. Conversa- 
tion is sometimes like the fresh rain, while a book is some- 
times like a stagnant reservoir. The river flows from small, 
hidden springs. 

In 1835 Mr. Woods was called to the Professorship of 
Sacred Literature in the Theological Seminary at Bangor, 
Maine. He remained in this office nearly four years. Dur- 
ing his two years residence in New York he had extended 
his investigations in the department of Biblical criticism. 
He therefore felt at home in his new professorship. Young 
men of high promise were attracted to the Seminary by the 
fame of his accomplishments. One of his pupils who has 
now attained a world-wide celebrity has written : " I enter- 
tained a profound admiration for the Professor's scholarship. 
To few young men had the world of thought opened its gates 
so widely. He had the high faculty of inspiring his scholars ; 
he made them feel that their studies demanded their most 
earnest effort. He made them see that they were entering 
upon a road hung with fruit on either hand. They had a 
sense of reward in all their labors. They were not beating 
the air. In this view of the Professor's character he seemed 
to be one of the elect of God, chosen for distinguished ser- 
vice in his kingdom." Some of his literary labors in this 
Professorship will be detailed in the sequel. 

In 1839, before he had reached the age of thirty-two years, 
Professor Woods was called from his office at Bangor to the 
Presidency of Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. He is 
said to have been nominated for the Presidency by the Hon- 
orable William Pitt Preble, a Justice of the Supreme Court 
of Maine, and an admirer of the Professor's elegant scholar- 



33 

ship. The young President delivered his Inaugural Dis- 
course on the third of September, 1839. It was one of his 
most felicitous efforts. It awakened the most sanguine hope 
that he would augment the power of the College in the 
church and in the state. 

Some of his early friends, while they regarded him as 
qualified for almost any office which he would be willing to 
accept, did not regard him as distinctively fitted for the Presi- 
dency of a college. His own preference had been to expend 
his strength on Biblical or philosophical or historical re- 
searches, or in calm and quiet meditation, rather than in 
keeping ward by day and watch by night over young men, 
some of whom were sent instead of going to college. He 
had been wont to recoil from the position of a disciplinarian, 
who must square his own conduct according to rule in order 
to stand as a model before those whom he governed. If he 
had been a member of the bar, he would have been more 
eminent as an advocate for his clients, than as a prosecuting 
attorney. He would have been quick to discern the signs of 
innocence or the palliations of guilt. In later years he justi- 
fied the law for the capture of fugitive slaves, but his nature 
would never have inclined him to chase the fugitives or to 
punish them if ' overtaken in their fault.' When he accepted 
the Presidency of the College he crossed many of his predi- 
lections ; and still, such was his power of adapting himself to 
circumstances, that he was not only contented in his office, 
but happier than he had been in any other. He soon devel- 
oped his many-sidedness. He gave his mind less than for- 
merly to his Oriental studies, and more to the practical details 
of life. He surprised his early friends by his adroitness in 
diplomacy. He began to cultivate the natural sciences more 
than ever, and he qualified himself to superintend all the 
departments of collegiate study, as well as to hold instruc- 
tive converse with experts in the various professions. 

He had indulged a kind of personal friendship for books, 
but now more than ever he cherished a personal friendship 
for young men. They not only knew, but felt, him to be their 

5 



34 

friend. He breathed courage into the fainting Freshman 
and soothed the returning prodigal. His wealth of learning 
was at the disposal of his pupils. His private converse with 
them was more instructive, because more stimulating than a 
book. They had never traversed the fields from which he 
had garnered ripe fruit. He was familiar with authors 
whose names, as he repeated them, had a strange sound ; and 
the young men were no less astonished at the multitude of 
his ideas than charmed with the style in which lie expressed 
them. His familiar style was classical. 

When he assumed the presidental office he had the enter- 
prise to request that a larger measure of instruction be 
assigned to him than had been required of his predecessors. 
He was wise in adhering to the old theory that the presiding 
officer of a college should be prominent as a teacher, partic- 
ularly an ethical teacher. His affluence of theological lore 
was skilfully used in corroborating Paley's Evidences of 
Christianity, and his rhetorical culture clothed the Analogy 
of Bishop Butler with a new grace. It was a remark of 
Goethe that " a man who understands only one language 
fails to understand that one ; " and President Woods illus- 
trated the truth that he who understands many languages 
may signalize himself as a master of the one which he daily 
uses. He also illustrated the truth of Guizot's remark that 
" every teacher should know far more than he will be called 
upon to teach ; for the more he knows of everything the 
better he can teach anything." The esteem in which he was 
held by such men as Eliphalet Nott, Francis Wayland, Ed- 
ward Everett, and other collegiate presidents reduplicated 
the reverence with which he was regarded at home. His 
light shone the brighter by the multitude of its reflectors. 
Bowdoin College was raised to a new honor by the dignity 
with which he represented it in the Universities of Europe 
and America. 

In 1843 Doctor Woods rendered to the College a service 
which will be held in lasting remembrance. The Institution 
had been named Bowdoin College in honor of James Bow- 



35 

doin, once Governor of Massachusetts. It had subsequently 
received liberal donations from Mr. James Bowdoin, the son 
of the Governor. In the estate of that son the College had 
a reversionary interest. Quite accidentally the eye of Presi- 
dent Woods rested on a newspaper paragraph announcing 
the death of James Temple Bowdoin, a nephew of the above- 
named donor. The President took immediate measures to 
ascertain and secure the rights of the College under the will 
of its princely benefactor. He made himself familiar with 
the legal questions involved in the case. The ablest counsel- 
lors of the Massachusetts Bar were called to his aid, but they 
were surprised to find him as much at home as themselves in 
the law of " Contingent Remainders." They pronounced his 
conduct of the affair " masterly." The Trustees and also 
the Overseers of the College recorded their votes, acknowl- 
edging " his constancy, fidelity, and prudence " in bringing 
the enterprise to a successful issue. The funds which he 
thus secured were appropriated to the erection of the new 
chapel which now adorns the grounds of the College. That 
imposing edifice is a monument of his adroitness and perse- 
verance. It is a significant memento of his architectural 
taste. It embodies the aesthetic theories which in the days 
of his youth he began to recommend. His influence on the 
architecture of our land was silent, indeed, but not small. 

In his discipline of his pupils President Woods was natu- 
rally influenced by Dr. Eliphalet Nott, for the benefit of whose 
instructions he had left Dartmouth for Union College in 
1824. He aimed, like President Nott, to make the collegians 
respect themselves, and thus revere the law as their friend, 
rather than resist it as their foe. He endorsed the words 
uttered by Dr. Nott in conversation with Professor Tayler 
Lewis : " The college is a family, and its government should 
be parental. These young students are my children. I am 
to them in place of a father. I feel as such toward them, 
and not simply as their governor or their official head." 
After recording these words, Professor Lewis naively adds : 
u There was connected with this paternal discipline an almost 



36 

unavoidable evil. The good boys, of whom I was one, — 
having no college misdemeanors, slight or serious, to boast 
of, — could hardly help feeling sometimes, that the Doctor 
was partial to ' the wilder fellows ' ; that he rather liked 
them, in fact, and took more pains with them than with the 
other and more exemplary members of college." 1 As was 
to be expected the unusual courtesy of President Woods in 
his intercourse with his pupils, his lenient and winning ways, 
combined with his charming discourses, with his rich and 
graceful Baccalaureate Addresses, gave him a marvellous 
popularity with the twenty-six classes who received their 
diplomas from him ; and when, after his resignation of his 
Presidency, he appeared at any assemblage of the alumni he 
was greeted with tumults of applause. 

The early colleges of New England had flourished under 
the auspices of the Congregational denomination. The Pres- 
ident of Harvard was considered the head of the Massachu- 
setts clergy. In the great processions of ministers, during 
the election week at Boston, he walked first. The Congrega- 
tional pastors of Connecticut held their high festival during the 
Commencement week at Yale. New Haven was their Jeru- 
salem ; thither the tribes went up ; they walked about" Zion ; 
told the towers thereof ; marked well her bulwarks, and con- 
sidered her palaces. Bowdoin College had been nurtured in 
a similar spirit by the Orthodox Congregationalists of Maine. 
They had enjoyed the denominational support of its Presi- 
dents, and a majority of all its Professors. They had been 
in sympathy with its internal administration. In large 
degree it had been dependent on them for its pupils. They 
had been its most constant patrons. Its traditions, how- 
ever, had not been all in one line. A majority of its 
Board of Trustees had not been adherents to the orthodox 
faith. Its Board of Overseers had not been of one creed. 
Conservative as he was, Mr. Woods looked upon these last 

1 Memoirs of Eliphalet Nott, D.D.. LL.D., for sixty-two years President of 
Union College. By C. Van Santvoord, D.D., with Contribution and Revision 
by Professor Tayler Lewis of Union College, p. 167. 



37 

named facts with deference. He took no special care to con- 
ciliate the pastors whose religious affinities were like those 
of his father. If he had done so he would have drawn 
around him and to him, as few other men could do, the 
sympathies and affections of the Congregationalists in Maine. 
He would have been the centre of an admiring circle who 
seemed to have a traditional right to regard him as their co- 
worker. But he declined to mingle in their ecclesiastical 
councils and their ministerial associations ; he did not preach 
their ordination sermons ; he seldom appeared in their pul- 
pits ; he opposed some of their distinctive principles. His 
fascinating qualities were such that he gave an unprecedented 
fame to the College while he was stepping over its denomina- 
tional ramparts ; but some of us, of course, will think that 
he would have given it a more stable prosperity if he had fol- 
lowed the traditions of his predecessors in office. He was a 
man of traditions. He had a kind of filial reverence for 
divines like Newman, Pusey, and Keble. To whatever church 
these men might belong, they would prefer to attract its 
sympathy for the colleges over which they might preside. 
Like these men, President Woods was a theoretical church- 
man ; unlike them, he was not a practical one. 

The early colleges of New England have not been political 
schools ; have not meant to interfere with the free thought 
or free speech of their pupils on civil more than on religious 
themes. Still, they have been, in the main, allied with one 
political class, which has retained its substantial identity of 
character although it has assumed different names. They 
have been supported by the party called at one time Federal, 
at another time Whig, at another Republican. Bowdoin 
College had received important aid from men belonging to 
the same party. If President Woods had continued his 
alliance with them he would have continued to receive their 
homage. He deemed it his duty, however, to oppose their 
distinctive policy. He did not yield to them when con- 
cession appeared to be the dictate of his self-interest. On 
some questions he has been called inconsistent with himself, 



38 

but in adhering to his political views in regard to the Southern 
slave-system he showed a marked self-consistency. He had 
opposed the abolitionists in their depression ; he continued 
to oppose them in their elevation. Urbane as he was, he 
could not resist the policy of the Maine Republicans without 
alienating them from him. Thus he came into conflict with 
statesmen as well as clergymen whose alliance was most 
needful for him. In his youth he was not regarded as a 
practical man, nor as a man of strong will ; but in main- 
taining his ground against political and ecclesiastical parties 
during our late civil war, he developed a skill in diplomacy, 
and a determined spirit which surprised his early friends. 
The time came, however, when he deemed it his duty to lay 
down his office. He had planned to lay it down when he had 
reached his sixtieth year. His resignation took effect on the 
second of July 1866, four months previous to his entrance 
on that year. 

While tracing the course of Dr. Woods as a conversation- 
alist, preacher, professor, and president, it was convenient 
for us to omit some details of his course as an editor and 
theologian. 

In January 1834, while residing in New York, he became 
the editor and proprietor of the Literary and Theological 
Review, and he continued to be its editor until December 
1837, nearly two years after his entrance on his professorship 
at Bangor. He conducted this Review " on his own respon- 
sibility, with the advice of an association of gentlemen in the 
city of New York and its neighborhood." " The leading ob- 
ject of the work " was " the statement and vindication of the 
doctrines of the Christian religion, as held by the great body 
of the reformed church." The more specific design was to 
resist certain innovations in theory and practice which 
alarmed the stricter Calvinists of that day. Still another 
design was to improve the tone of our national literature. 
The early characteristics of Mr. Woods qualified him to be in 
many particulars an admirable editor of such a Quarterly. 



39 

He was well-fitted to enlist youthful writers in his service, 
and thus to unearth previously undeveloped genius. As early 
as 1832, before he was twenty-five years of age, he was 
urgently recommended by Richard H. Dana, the poet, to be 
the editor of the Spirit of the Pilgrims, — a periodical which 
Dr. Lyman Beecher styled " the right arm of Calvinism." 

In conducting his Theological Review, Mr. Woods threw 
out his opinions at once and in a mass, instead of stealthily 
expressing them one by one. He came out simultaneously 
against various parties in the church and in the state, instead 
of adopting the policy of a cautious general who confines him- 
self to one war at a time. He had been loved as mild and 
gentle, but he now stood up as a controversialist. He proved 
that his amiable spirit was not an easy indifference to what 
he deemed the truth. He developed his faithfulness to his 
convictions, even at the expense of assailing the creed of some 
of his friends. In his Introduction to his Review he sounded 
a bugle-note of battle, and his bravery elicited the admiration 
of his confederates. The following was one of his utterances : 
" Most cheerfully, then, can we subscribe to the fearless dec- 
laration of Coleridge, that ' as far as opinions and not motives, 
principles and not men, are concerned, we neither are tolerant 
nor wish to be regarded as such.' In the same noble spirit 
he [Coleridge] affirms : ' As much as I love my fellow-men, 
so much and no more will I be intolerant of their heresies 
and unbeliefs ; and I will honor and hold forth the right 
hand of fellowship to every individual who is equally intol- 
erant of that which he conceives to be such in me.' " 1 In 
conformity with this proclamation, Mr. Woods wrote some 
and inserted other paragraphs condemning in the general the 
principles of what was called the New School of Theology, 

1 Literary and Theological Review, Vol. i. p. 20. See Coleridge's Friend (1st 
Am. ed.), p. 80. In soliciting the contributions of European theologians, Mr. 
Woods remarked : " It is the principal object of the Review to sustain ortho- 
doxy in opposition to the decidedly Pelagian tendencies which have been show- 
ing themselves in our country, and to uphold a settled order of worship and re- 
ligious action, in opposition to the extravagant measures which have seemed 
.ready to sweep everything before them." — Letter to Rev. Dr. Raffles. 



40 

and in particular the principles of what was called the New 
Haven School. He applauded the old system of teaching the 
Westminster Assembly's Catechism to the rising generation. 
He condemned the current literature of our Sabbath Schools. 
Dr. Bennet Tyler, Dr. Asahel Nettleton, Dr. Nathaniel W. 
Hewit, Dr. John Woodbridge were delighted with his 
bravery and his agility as a leader of the war-horses. But 
he soon went beyond their lines. He wrote some, and in- 
serted other paragraphs in vigorous opposition to the new 
methods of conducting religious revivals, especially the 
methods adopted by Rev. Charles G. Finney. He believed 
that, these new measures in practice were an outgrowth of 
the new speculations in doctrine. In resisting these novel- 
ties he minded the proverb which he so often cited : " My 
son, fear God and the king, and meddle not with those who are 
given to change." He manifested his dread of novelties by 
inserting an Essay defending the genuineness of 1 John v. 7, 
8: " There are three that bear record in heaven," etc. He 
inserted an Article, which he had translated from the Ger- 
man, disparaging the science of geology as far as it conflicted 
with the first of Genesis ; and favoring the principle that " it 
is certainly wrong to make nature, which is lower, the measure 
and criterion of revelation, which is higher, and more imme- 
diately and directly from God." 1 In his antipathy against 
violent and sudden changes, he published severe censures on 
the men whom he termed Radicals and Ultra-Reformers ; but 
many of his criticisms on these men would have been equally 
just if they had been made on Martin Luther and his confed- 
erates in the Protestant Reformation. He allowed the pub- 
lication of several paragraphs which implied, and in his social 
converse he frankly asserted, that the course of the German. 
Reformers was either a misfortune or a mistake, and that 
reformation 191 the church might and should have been sub- 
stituted for separation from the church. He exhibited his 
independent spirit not only in opposing the course pursued 
by Temperance Societies and Anti-slavery Societies, but also 

1 Literary and Theological Review, Vol. i. p. 120 sq. 



41 

in publishing paragraphs against the general system of Vol- 
untary Societies as contrasted with Ecclesiastical Boards. 
He believed that the work of disseminating religious truth 
should be performed not by irresponsible associations, but by 
the church as such. In conversing with theologians he 
strenuously defended an Article which he inserted in his Re- 
view, advocating the union of all evangelical sects in one 
church. It was proposed that this church retain the forms 
and the creed which prevailed in the third and fourth cen- 
tury, and cleave to the principle of Tertullian : u Whatever 
is first is true ; whatever is more recent is spurious." 

In publishing such Articles, some of which he wrote, and 
others he orally defended, the editor came out in direct 
antagonism to some of the very divines who had been the 
main supporters of the Review. One of these divines wrote 
an elaborate Article for the work, but Mr. Woods refused to 
publish it, and thus repelled one of the most noted cham- 
pions of orthodoxy. Even when defending the doctrines of 
Calvinism he was wont to make concessions which displeased 
the Calvinists of the Old School. Thus while he was assert- 
ing that the doctrine of " absolute decrees," of " uncondi- 
tional election " is a " necessary inference " from the true 
doctrine of " the entire inability of man," he said : " We 
cannot but approve that indeterminateness of the Articles of 
the English Church on this subject which allows them to be 
honestly subscribed by those who lean either to a Calvinistic 
or an Arminian construction of the Christian system. No 
principle appears to us more obvious or more important, than 
that public articles which are to be made the basis and the 
terms of Christian fellowship should be so simply framed as to 
secure the assent of all evangelical Christians, however weak 
or imperfect they may be in the faith of the gospel." 2 Of 
course the editor did not expect that the veteran athletes, 

1 Literary and Theological Review, Vol. iv. pp. 253, 254. See, also, Vol. ii. 
pp. 140 sq., 311 sq. It is a singular fact that the policy advocated by some ex- 
tremists of the New School, favoring the admission of Arminians as well as 
Calvinists into the Congregational ministry, was advocated as early as 1837, by 
the editor of a periodical patronized by extremists of the Old School. 



42 

who had fought for the distinctive principles and the techni- 
cal terms of the ancient Calvinism, would endorse his plan 
of a national church combining the different evangelical 
denominations, and satisfying itself with a " simple creed. " 
They preferred a creed containing many articles, even if it 
met the demands of only the few believers, rather than a 
creed containing only a few articles and thereby meeting the 
demands of the many believers. They confided in a small 
number of men strong in one comprehensive faith, rather 
than in a large number whose faith was limited. 

In this opposition to some divines of the Old School and 
some of the Xew, to many revivalists, abolitionists, and 
advocates of a rigid temperance, Mr. Woods developed his 
enthusiasm for what he deemed the right cause. He 
thought it cowardly to inquire : What will become of my 
influence ? He stood ready to throw his influence away. He 
was an admirer not only of self-forgetfulness, but also of 
self-abnegation. He often acted on the two principles ; first, 
that what is true is useful, and secondly, that it ought to be 
uttered whether it is useful or not. He had an early con- 
tempt for utilitarian theories, and often shrank from the cal- 
culation of consequences, and perhaps as often proved himself 
to be an expert calculator. Thus was he marked, here as 
elsewhere, by redundancy rather than deficiency. 

Deficiency ! The utterance of this word changes the whole 
current of our thoughts. Opulent as he was in his resources 
we cannot say of him as Dryden said of the Duke of Buck- 
ingham : 

" A man so various that he seemed to be 
Xot one, but all mankind's epitome." 

Three of the most important series of Articles which he 
began to publish in his periodical he never completed ; the 
periodical as a whole did not equal his exalted standard, and 
he broke off his connection with it abruptly at the end of 
four years. His affluence of theological learning was never 
afterward developed in any published treatise or even essay. 



43 

Notwithstanding all his extensive preparations, he ceased at 
the early age of thirty years to be a theological author. 
Leonard Woods, the first, published six octavo volumes, in 
addition to pamphlets and essays which would fill two octavos 
more ; but all the theological essays, pamphlets, and treatises 
which were written, composed, or translated by Leonard 
Woods, the second, would occupy less than half the space 
which had been rilled by his father. He devoted a large 
amount of time and labor to the editorial care of his father's 
History of Andover Theological Seminary, and in this enter- 
prise he made extensive researches into the early New Eng- 
land theology ; but the results of his work he never perfected. 
The riches of his theological literature, however, were not 
lost. They were a treasure in his Bowdoin lecture-room. He 
wrote his letters deep on the hearts of his pupils. Living 
scholars were his books, and they, instead of types and ink, 
are the means of perpetuating his influence. 

We have now partially indicated the mode and degree in 
which the history of President Woods corresponded with the 
early predictions concerning him. 1 Let us now indicate this 
mode and degree more fully. It is easy to perceive that his 
editorial course in New York and Bangor tended to alienate 
from him a large class of Congregationalists, and allure to 
him the elite of some other denominations who overlooked 
his Calvinism in their approval of his independence. He 
lessened his intercourse with certain hard workers of his own 
sect who opposed his speculations, and he contracted special 
intimacies with the refined and philosophical members of 
other sects who rejoiced in his literary conversation. He 
was human. Like a sensitive plant he recoiled from the in- 
jurious touch. Almost every man forms his opinions under 
the influence of social sympathies ; is drawn nearer and 
nearer to the companions who appreciate him, is repelled 
farther and farther from the strangers who oppose him. 
From his boyhood Dr. Woods had nurtured a class of senti- 
1 See pages 10, 11. 



44 

ments which prepared him to welcome many developments 
of the Oxford divimty. Here he was certainly self-consistent 
through life. As early as the year 1836 he began to read the 
Oxford Tracts. They struck a cord of sympathy in his heart. 
They gave a new force to some of his life-long tendencies. 
In August 1840 he set sail for Europe. He had no sooner 
landed on the British coast than he moved toward Oxford, as 
a needle toward the magnet. " I have passed [here]" he 
writes, " one of the happiest weeks of my life. All my pre- 
possessions in favor of the English system of education have 
been justified after the most minute inspection. The studies 
are not more extensive or more thorough than with us ; but 
there is here a magnificence of architecture, an assemblage 
of paintings, statues, gardens, and walks ; above all a solem- 
nity and grandeur of religious worship which does more to 
elevate the taste and purify the character than the whole 
encyclopaedia of knowledge. In each one of the twenty col- 
leges here there is a chapel, the poorest of which surpasses 
the richest I have ever seen in America. And the service 
daily performed within them is congruous to the place. In 
several of them it is performed by eight chaplains and six- 
teen choristers, robed in white, who are all supported by the 
foundations, and by whom day by day, and year after year, 
God is magnified in strains delivered down from the primi- 
tive church, if not the very strains of David himself. The 
effect produced by the service thus performed is inconceiv- 
ably great, especially upon the young men here. The chapels 
are never entered but for the purposes of religion, or without 
the marks of the profoundest reverence. I have been received 
[by the gentlemen] here in a manner which has made me 
forget that I am not altogether one of them. Dr. Pusey has 
treated me like a brother. He is a humble, devout, self- 
denying Christian, devoting his large fortune, his time, and 
strength to the cause of Christ. I heard him preach what 
would have been called a faithful, practical sermon, in any 
New England pulpit. I have attended his Hebrew lectures, 
and could have wished that the godly fear and reverence 



45 

which he showed for the divine oracles might be shown by 
all expositors. I have talked with him hour by hour on all 
the doctrines of Christianity with an agreement at which he 
seemed to be not a little surprised. By him I have been 
taken into the very heart of [the Oxford] society, and have 
lived among the Fellows of the different colleges so inti- 
mately, breakfasting, dining, and supping in the different 
colleges alternately, that I have at last come to understand 
what I never could before, and what so few foreigners ever 
do, the system of the English universities. I have taken 
ample notes, of which I hope to make some use hereafter." 

With a similar glow of enthusiasm the President describes 
his residence in the palaces of the British noblemen. He 
received flattering attentions from bishops and archbishops, 
dukes and duchesses, lords and ladies. In Paris he dined 
with Louis Phillippe at the Tuilleries. He interested the 
king,Tind charmed the queen, and captivated the princesses. 
During one of his evening visits to the palace he saw ' in its 
highest perfection all which is meant by the pride of life ' ; 
he enjoyed the festivities until about three o'clock in the 
morning, but remembered that ' he had been brought up on 
the idea that it was almost wrong to be out after nine o'clock 
in the evening, even for a religious meeting.' He then pur- 
sued his course toward Rome ; and when we reflect that he 
had been trained as a Puritan of the Puritans on Andover 
hill, before the fine arts had begun to be very enthusiasti- 
cally cultivated there, we feel tempted to say that he had a 
triumphal entrance into the eternal city. There were cardi- 
nals who welcomed him with profound respect. The Pope, 
Gregory XVI., paid him distinguished honor ; invited him to 
a private colloquy at the Vatican, conversed with him for an 
hour in the Latin language, and afterward expressed his ad- 
miration for the young American who expressed so many 
wise thoughts in such classical and elegant Latin. 

Before his visit to Europe he had been absorbed in the 
Writings of the Count DeMaistre. After his visit he became 
perhaps equally absorbed in the writings of Thomas Aquinas. 



46 

Probably no two authors exerted so much influence upon him 
as these. Under the stimulus which he received from them, 
particularly from Count DeMaistre, he had projected the 
plan of an extended treatise which would require years of 
preparation. He intended to incorporate into this treatise 
the substance of his Inaugural Discourse and of his Lecture 
on the Liberties of the Ancient Republics. 1 The general 
tenor of it would have resembled the English work which has 
since been published, under the title of " The Formation of 
Christendom." 2 He elaborated his plan, was dissatisfied 
with some of its features, changed and improved them, looked 
around on all sides, hesitated, but still expected, and at length 
the result of his extensive preparation lay entombed in his 
own mind. 

What form of dogma was to be advocated in this " labor of 
his life " it is safer to conjecture than to proclaim. He was 
one of those peculiar men who have opinions and opinions 
and opinions. The first class of his opinions he never made 
known except in the bosom of his most confidential friend- 
ship. He did not feel sufficient confidence in them to stand 
responsible for them. He confided in a second class of his 
opinions so much that he would reveal them in oral conver- 
sation, but not so much that he would reveal them in a pub- 
lished treatise. A third class of opinions he held so firmly 
that he was willing to record them on the printed page. We 
may treat him unfairly when we repeat in one form, one 
order, one proportion, what he shrank from uttering in that 
form, that order, that proportion. A conversationalist is apt 
to express in the parlor an opinion which, if printed, would 
have a deeper emphasis, a bolder prominence than he would 
justify or allow it. The tones of the voice give a perspective, 
a fore-shortening which cannot be given by the ink and type. 
Dr. Woods was apt to idealize what others would express in 
a more realistic form. What he thought in secret, let it re- 

1 See pp. 29, 30, 33, above. 

2 By T. W. Allies. In three volumes. London : Longman, Green, Roberts, 
and Green. 1865, 1869, 1870. 



47 

main as he thought it. What he uttered in conversation, let 
it remain conversational. What he was not ready to publish 
let it remain unpublished. To the world he has given no 
reason to believe that he ever abandoned the Augustinian 
dogmas which he publicly defended in his youth. His latest 
theological labors were devoted to the protection of the 
"Andover Creed." As his character seemed to combine dif- 
fering personalities, so his ecclesiastical faith may have com- 
prehended portions of diverging symbols. It may have been 
a single garment woven without seam, while it may appear 
to have been a coat of many colors. Notwithstanding all his 
life-long proclivities toward a mediaeval ritualism, yet so far 
as his public relations are considered he lived and died an 
Independent. Within the circle of the Congregationalists 
there has not arisen a single conspicuous man who was 
practically a more uncompromising Independent than Dr. 
Woods. He maintained a broad Catholicism ; he was frank 
in avowing his disapproval of here and there a principle 
adopted by his ancestors ; yet, on the whole, he preferred to 
remain self-poised, in the denomination which they had hal- 
lowed. As it was his living, so it was his dying wish, that 
his body should rest in the Andover cemetery near to the 
bodies of his father and his mother ; of that instructor whom 
he venerated as an old prophet ; of that classmate whom as 
he loved in the beginning, so he continued to love unto the 
end. Further than this history has not recorded ; further 
than this I doubt whether history has a right to record. 

We now come to a new chapter in the biography of Presi- 
dent Woods. In 1839 he was elected a member of the Maine 
Historical Society, and in 1852 a member of its Publishing 
Committee, and also of its Standing Committee. " He was 
not only a useful but a delightful member of these Com- 
mittees ; was not only respected, but venerated and loved." 
In 18G7 he was requested by the Society to collect materials 
in Europe for the early history of the State of Maine. The 
Governor of Maine, acting under the authority of the Legis- 



48 

lature, gave him a commission for this purpose. He was 
also recommended by the Department of State at Washington. 
He was favorably introduced by some of the most distin- 
guished historians in our country to some of the most dis- 
tinguished historians in Europe. In this his second foreign 
tour he was a most industrious historian from June 18G7, 
until September 1868. Being highly accredited by our highest 
civilians he had access to various public and private collec- 
tions of rare and valuable documents ; he explored the 
archives of the British State-Paper Offices, and obtained 
transcripts of valuable .documents relating to the early his- 
tory of Maine. He gained access to the unrivalled collection 
of early and authentic maps in the British Museum. During 
his residence in Paris he had frequent interviews with M. 
D'Avezac, the learned archaeologist, and obtained from him 
interesting and important information. He induced him to 
write "A letter on the voyages of John and Sebastian Cabot" 
advocating the opinion " that the voyage made by the Cabots 
in which North America was first discovered, after the times 
of the Northmen, took place in 1494, and was followed in 
1497, 1498, and 1517, by three successive voyages to the 
same regions." This letter was translated from the French 
by Dr. Woods, and published in the first volume of the " Doc- 
umentary History of the State of Maine." The larger part 
of that interesting volume is " A History of the Discovery of 
the East Coast of North America, particularly the Coast of 
Maine, from the Northmen in 990 to the Charter of Gilbert 
in 1578, by J. G. Kohl, of Bremen, Germany." For this 
History, illustrated by copies of the earliest maps and charts 
of our Eastern Coast, we are indebted to President Woods. 
He knew the high reputation of Dr. Kohl, as a historian and 
a cartographer, made frequent visits to him in Bremen, Ger- 
many, and made arrangements with him for writing the his- 
tory. The whole volume of five hundred and thirty five 
octavo pages is a monument to the enterprise, sagacity, and 
persuasive power of Dr. Woods. 

During this visit to Europe he also obtained a copy of the 



49 

" Discourse on Western Planting, written in the year 1584, 
by Richard Hakluyt." This discourse had lain in manuscript 
nearly three hundred years. Dr. Woods exhibited rare skill 
and shrewdness in discovering it, and a singular adroitness 
in procuring an exact copy of it for the press. The dis- 
course with the preliminary and appended papers forms the 
second volume, containing two hundred and fifty-three octavo 
pages, of the Documentary History of Maine. To this vol- 
ume Dr. Woods prepared an elaborate Preface and Introduc- 
tion. He left them both, however, in rough notes, " written 
in several memorandum books, and on detached sheets of 
paper, intended evidently as hints to the memory for future 
use." These loose papers lay in his library when it was in- 
jured and nearly destroyed by fire. To bring them together, 
so as to form a consistent whole, would have been a discourag- 
ing work, even if they had not been defaced by the action of 
the flames and the fire-engines. The health of Dr. Woods 
failed before he had adjusted to each other the disjecta mem- 
bra of his work. In his best years he did not, and in his last 
years he could not obey the rule : " Propositum perfice opus." 
His notes were committed to his friend, the accomplished 
antiquarian, Dr. Charles Deane of Cambridge, Massachusetts. 
With marvellous ingenuity, patience, and faithfulness, Dr. 
Deane constructed the Preface and the Introduction mainly 
in the language of President Woods. The President was 
more than satisfied with them, and adopted them as his own. 
In itself the whole volume is one of remarkable and almost 
romantic interest. In its relation to Dr. Woods it is replete 
with melancholy suggestions. 

We are now prepared for the saddest chapter of his life. 
He was remarkable for a kind of personal attachment to the 
books which he owned. He had an interest in them as his 
old friends. Pie loved not merely the souls, but also the 
bodies of them. He delighted in seeing them arranged along 
the walls of a capacious room, and in walking to and fro by 
their side, as if he were conversing with them, and they were 
7 



50 

sensitive to his praise of them. In 1873 he built such a room. 
It was a model Library containing a fine apparatus for study, 
and finished with exquisite taste. For three weeks he rev- 
elled in its luxurious accommodations. On the eighth of 
August, while partaking of his morning repast, he was 
startled by the cry : " Mr. Woods, your Library is on fire." 
These words fell like a thunderbolt upon him. Twelve hun- 
dred choice volumes with which his life had been bound up 
were encircled by the flames. Manuscripts on which he had 
spent years of toil were either consumed entirely, or else 
damaged so as to become mementos of his loss. Only two 
hundred of his books were rescued from the conflagration, 
and these were not his special favorites, nor were they saved 
without being charred by the fire, or drenched by the water. 
Such a sudden loss of intellectual property which could never 
be restored, such a rupture of life-long associations which 
could never regain their charm, seemed for a time to paralyze 
him. Still he uttered no complaint. He dragged out a few 
months in the work of arranging some of his scorched manu- 
scripts, and determining what to do with the defaced rem- 
nants of his books. 

In the winter of 1874, he began to exhibit signs of a phys- 
ical disorder than which none could be more disheartening to 
a mind like his. For twenty-five or thirty years, there had 
been reasons for anticipating this disorder. Perhaps the pre- 
sentiment of it had modified his intellectual course. Perhaps 
we may explain some unexpected features of his history by 
the normal influence of such a presentiment. His mother, 
after having suffered twelve years from paralysis, had died of 
that disease. He inherited her constitution. Ominous pains of 
body began to warn him of his end. His memory, too, began 
to fail. On the 15th day of June, 1875, he was prostrated 
by the paralytic shock for which, perhaps, he had been 
secretly preparing his mind. He soon rallied his powers in 
some degree, but they were like soldiers whose commander 
had been wounded on the field. It has been happily said 1 

1 By Professor C. C. Everett, in a speech delivered in Boston soon after the 
decease of Dr. Woods. 



51 

that in his best days his life was like " the ripe, deep, serious 
melody of the organ in contrast with the sentimentalism of 
the flute, and the harshness of the clarion." But now he 
began to lose the mastery of some keys of the organ. The 
noble instrument lost its large variety of tone. Its richest 
and sweetest sounds lived only in their echo. If, in his early 
youth, the poets had foretold the manner of his death, they 
would have sung : 

" The year grows rich as it groweth old, 
And life's latest sands are its sands of gold." 

But the golden sands of his life were dimmed. He had 
been wont to feel a poetic interest in the old cathedral, whose 
well-turned cornices were crumbling into dust, and to express 
a peculiar sadness at the thought of a mind, the mysterious 
cathedral, its arches falling one by one, its pillars failing to 
give the needed support. Such a mind seems to be attend- 
ing the funeral of its own faculties, and mourning their un- 
timely decay. Still that equanimity which he had cultivated 
in the days of his strength continued to adorn him in the 
days of his weakness. With painful effort and with frequent 
rebuffs he labored to solve the philosophical and historical 
problems which had previously tasked his mind. He would 
listen to the reading of a book by others when he could no 
longer hold the book for reading it himself. Every night 
before he laid his head upon his pillow he desired to hear a 
chapter of Thomas a Kempis, a Psalm of the Old Testament, 
or some verses from his mother's copy of the New Testament. 
At length, however, about the end of the year 1877, came 
another of the shocks which seemed to threaten the demo- 
lition of his powers. He began to lose his interest in the lit- 
erature which did not relate to the eternal world. " Numa 
and the Muses called after him in vain." We have read of the 
eagle dying in the cage where it had been long confined, yet 
rousing itself for a brief minute, and trying to flap its wings 
when it caught a glimpse of the mountains over which it had 
once wheeled its flight. So the stricken President, while 
curbed and fettered by his disease, would show the signs of 



52 

his old vivacity when he heard the familiar sound : " Veni 
Creator Spiritus," and the sequence : " Veni Sancte Spiritus." 
Tlie ancient Latin prayers, the venerable liturgic services, 
would seem for a time to revive his slumbering energies. It 
was not to be expected that he would utter rapturous words 
during what he had once described as that " dreary season 
of infirmity and decrepitude in which the vital flame flickers 
faintly in its socket" ; but all his words were a paraphrase of 
the prayer : " Not as I will, but as Thou wilt." Resignation, 
as it was a signal virtue of his life, became the crowning 
virtue of his death. Throughout the foregoing narrative it is 
seen that while he was inconsistent with himself in certain 
details of his history, yet in the general course of it he was 
true to certain principles which he adopted early and retained 
late. A humble emblem of this constancy may be detected 
in the incident, that the last prayer which he ever offered 
aloud was in the words of the first prayer which his mother 
taught him. In his childish days he began to utter it before 
he had learned to lisp its words distinctly ; he held it in his 
sensitive heart ; and on the last night of his life, among the 
last words which he ever uttered, when he was again unable 
to pronounce the syllables distinctly, he repeated the same 
prayer, and laid himself " down to sleep." 






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